An odd kind of result, really

OK, we had real problems connecting up whilst initially abroad which consumed loads of time and caused endless frustration. A word of advice - don't do the BT dongle thing if you are going abroad. Even if you are clever enough to ensure that you can use it abroad (they don't tell you to do this, of course, but you need to contact them to remove the default bar on foreign operations) it will cost you an absolute arm and leg and many other body parts. Buy some wifi time from People like Orange in the country you are visiting and find a wifi hotspot. But I digress.....

I did write up a lot of stuff on the laptop ready to upload to the blog once we sorted out the connection issues. I didn't have time to do it for the first couple of times that we connected as there were issues of trying to run a business whilst abroad, so it didn't get uploaded. As you will see in a minute, it never now will be!

We had a great time meeting up with and gathering together various family members in various parts of France and Switzerland but we all finished up at a fabulous restaurant in Meribel for our pre-Christmas lunch. Probably only we would think of driving half way round Europe to get everybody together for lunch! It was a rather surrealistic trip, involving nights parked in shopping centre car parks in sub-zero temperatures (-10 one night) and in the back streets of Geneva, but we all seemed to enjoy it - and the lunch was fabulous.

After the lunch the children returned to UK (except Stu & Lou, who stayed at their work in Meribel) and we pushed off south in the van hoping for warmer weather. As we went, we ran first into a southerly gale then into 12 hours of torrential rain. We spent Christmas Day on an Aire near Narbonne and carried on into Spain duly arriving in Barcelona, where it wasn't actually raining or freezing, on 27 December. Several other motorhomes, mostly Italians, shared the carpark with us overnight and the people in the next van told us they had left their vans all that day in the car park whilst they went into town. So we felt quite secure doing the same thing next day. We left at about 9.30 am and did a lovely guided walking tour of the Old Town. When we got back in the afternoon, though, there was a big blank place where the van had been!

And so it transpired. Somebody had nicked it and everything in it. We were left with the clothes we stood in and (thankfully) our passports, cash and cards. There was no alternative to getting the first available flight back to the UK. We filled in all the necesary forms with the police, who were sympathetic but didn't seem enormously interested in doing anything about it.

So we are back. We are going to spend a few more days working out a plan and try to chivvy up the insurance people (Allianz, who underwrite the Safeguard policies) although there isn't much chance of getting anything moving there for a few weeks. We need to decide what we want to do.  My niece Debbie (hi, Debs!) has commented on the last post urging us to basically get back in the saddle and get on with it but right now we aren't sure that's what we will want to do, even when we get enough money to be able to do so. Althpugh the comprehensive insurance is good, we will still be considerably out of pocket when it's all finalised. We'll think about it and decide what to do. Meantime, we are snowed up in Marlow! Been an interesting few weeks, all in all!